Description
Eryngium campestre is a stiff, greyish or greenish, hairless perennial, with complexly-divided prickly leaves, and a wide display of small greenish heads, each based with a whorl of 5-6 large spine-like bracts, and within a head each small flower is attended by a small simple spine. The basal leaves are long-stalked and pinnate.
It has two natural varieties - [4]
var. campestre is blueish-greyish green with the bracts (whorled under the heads) being widest near their middle, and geographically is more northern, stretching north of the Mediterranean from Portugal to Germany on the west side through to Turkey into Central European Russia on the east, with presence on the south in North Africa just in Algeria and Morocco. [5]
var. virens (Link) Weins is yellowier-greeny with the bracts (whorled under the heads) being widest near their base, more dry-tolerant (xerophytic), and geographically is more southern and eastern, stretching along the south of the Mediterranean from Morocco to Iran, with patchy distribution directly on the north side. [6]
In Britain it resembles the better known sea holly (Eryngium maritimum), but is taller and looser, greener, and the whorls under the flower heads are not leaf-like, the heads being smaller, or some of the garden Eryngos, but green. This plant flowers between July and September. [3]
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